Thursday, April 24, 2008

The Unprofessional Beer Review: La Fin Du Monde

Posted by
Adam Parker

"So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God." 1 Corinthians 10:31

Here at Bring the Books, we not only feel that we should eat to the glory of God, but we also feel that the things we drink should be to His glory, as well. This morning, I had orange juice and coffee, but that's not interesting. What is interesting, though, is what I had this evening with the men in my "accountability group" which meets (seemingly) on a bi-annual basis. And so begins what I hope will be a new tradition here at Bring the Books: The Unprofessional Beer Review.

Now, drinking beer has a rich history in Reformed circles. Martin Luther was known to throw a few back in his day, and how boring would monastic life have been living under the Roman Catholic regime if it hadn't been for beer? It's a rhetorical question, but I'll answer anyway: very boring.

In fact, I recall one of our professors sitting in class making an extraordinary attempt to paint the image of Martin Luther, beads of sweat on his forehead as he tried to understand Romans. Part of our professor's word-image of Luther was the image of this irreverent, farting genius, dividing Christendom; all the while holding this half-empty Steiner with a few notches carved into the handle. It was in this moment that I looked around at my Reformed friends in class and thought, "There is nothing un-Christian about drinking beer." I realized that this is a rich and long-held tradition which has only recently (in the last two hundred years, the same time frame for the rise of dispensationalism, coincidentally) come under the scrutiny of the tea-totalers.*

And so, we here at Bring the Books are taking back beer for Jesus. And tonight, I want to make my first toast to a glorious drink called La Fin Du Monde, which is french for "The End of the World." And might I say, dear friends, that if the world was ending tonight, this is the drink you would want clutched under one arm with your Bible in the other. A light triple-fermented beer, this is a light ale which I greatly enjoyed. It is light without a strong or obnoxious aftertaste. Bottled in Canada, we now have just one more reason to keep our finger away from the button and aim those nukes back at Antarctica where they belong. At 9% alcohol, I was the first one at my mens' group tonight confessing my sins and opening my heart for all my accountability partners to see.

Of course, we here at Bring the Books do not condone drunkenness, so I cannot emphasize enough that the 1 1/2 Pint bottle is meant to be shared in Christian fellowship. Remember: drinking alone is not only sad, but if you finish off the whole bottle, you will be in violation of Scriptural prohibitions against drunkenness. (Unless you're a lightweight like Josh Walker, in which case you should only have about a thimble-full.) After having half the bottle, not only was I feeling good, but I still had enough faculties about me to recite the pledge of allegiance, recite the alphabet backwards, and walk in a straight line, but I was even able to present compelling reasons why Christians should abandon this whole trendy global warming bandwagon.

Overall, in my unprofessional opinion, I rate La Fin Du Monde a solid 8.0 on a scale of 1 to 10, and I highly recommend it for the purposes of fellowshipping with fellow believers. The bottle is big enough for sharing, and the flavor is very light and delicious with hardly any aftertaste (I'm not a big fan of aftertastes). You've done it again, Canada. You've done it again!

*[Sorry, tea-totalers, but this simply is not an article defending alcohol. Maybe I'll write one in the future if a lot of abolitionists cry out against it, but this beer review is not the place where that's going to happen. I may write an article defending the occasional use of tobacco (which I have been made aware is apparently talked about all over Scripture!) for the purposes of Christian fellowship, but this is, again, neither the time nor the place for that.]

Rich, I assume you mean, how do people argue Tobacco is wrong? In my experience, the argument usually involves the use of Romans 12 and the fact that our body is a temple. [Begin Sarcasm] Of course, you and I can both agree from the context that Paul was clearly talking about the rampant and well-documented Roman tobacco abuses of the time. [End Sarcasm]